Liars Albums (4)
What The Critics Say
After making densely packed, high-concept albums like They Were Wrong, So We Drowned and Drum's Not Dead, the most experimental thing Liars could do was make their version of a pop album. Liars strips away most of the concepts and some of the ornate sonics of the band's previous two albums, leaving a simpler, smaller-scale album with as much impact as their more ambitious work. Each song here is focused -- only a handful stretch past four minutes long -- but Liars wanders wherever it wants to, touching on noise, prog, hard rock, punk, industrial, and other styles the band has flirted with in the past, as well as a few uncharted ones. The album begins with "Plaster Casts of Everything," a flame-throwing rock behemoth that sounds even heavier compared to the largely atmospheric sound of Drum's Not Dead. While it's just as furious as anything from They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top, it isn't a return to how they did rock before. Likewise, "Cycle Time"'s art-damaged biker metal and "Clear Island"'s snotty, dystopian electro garage rock are unmistakably Liars -- loud, weird, oddly tribal -- but don't sound rehashed. They feel fresh, and so does the band's new attention to songcraft and structure. Those two words sound like they should hinder the band's momentum, but actually, they refine it. This is especially apparent on "Freak Out," which turns brilliantly dumb drums, rumbling guitars, and a melody sweet enough to be a soda-pop jingle into the catchiest song the band has done since "There's Always Room on the Broom." "Freak Out"'s mix of art, noise, and pop recalls mid- to late-'80s Sonic Youth, an influence that also popped up on Drum's Not Dead and that Liars explore more fully on this album. The cavernous, dissonant "What Would They Know" and "Pure Unevil"'s nose-diving guitars owe a debt to EVOL and Bad Moon Rising, but never feel derivative. Liars also uses Drum's Not Dead's sonic depth sparingly and artfully, as on "Leather Prowler"'s ominously muffled layers of organic and digital decay, and expands on that album's vulnerability with "Protection," which manages to sound nostalgic and uneasy at the same time. In between Liars' ferocious rock and more expansive tracks, the band finds time to go in still other intriguing directions. "Houseclouds" is all funky falsettos, rattlesnake beats, and undulating keyboards, and could pass for a mischievous collaboration between Beck and Radiohead; "Sailing to Byzantium" detours into late night dub-prog. In a lesser band's hands, this kaleidoscopic approach could be a muddled mess, but it makes for Liars' most entertaining album yet. It's a good thing the band waited until this album to make it their namesake: Liars may very well be the best representation they can do. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'Drum's Not Dead'
Release Date 1/1/2005
Tracks 15
Label Mute Corporation
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Continuing to explore the noise rock/prog rock fusion they pioneered with They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, Liars return with another concept album, Drum's Not Dead. The idea behind this album is even more abstract than They Were Wrong's conflation of witch trials and pagan rituals: Drum's Not Dead revolves around the yin-yang relationship of two forces in the creative process, personified as Mt. Heart Attack (who represents stress and self-doubt) and Drum (the embodiment of creative energy and productivity). While this is an intriguing concept, unfortunately the actual music doesn't always live up to it. Drum's Not Dead borrows pages from the urban-pagan, atmospherically noisy playbooks of both Black Dice and Animal Collective, although the album isn't as evocative as the former band's work nor as cuddly-weird as the latter's. Nothing here is nearly as abrasive, or immediate, as "There's Always Room on the Broom" -- throughout the album, Liars stay away from their comfort zone of dynamic noise-rock. This "quiet is the new loud" philosophy is admirable, but too often, Drum's Not Dead sounds oddly blurred and subdued. Interestingly enough for an album that uses mountains as a motif, its terrain is actually more like a valley, starting and ending with powerful tracks and dipping sharply in the middle. Drum's Not Dead begins with "Be Quiet Mt. Heart Attack," which is not only the album's best track, but one of the finest things Liars have ever done. With dark, shimmering guitars that recall EVOL-era Sonic Youth and minimal but monumental drumming, it's full of beauty and brooding that is immediately exploded by the growling drones and heavy, tribal polythrhythms of "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack," which conjures up images of fiery, twirling drumsticks and sinister rites. It's tempting to say that Drum's Not Dead gets its point across in just the first two tracks, but that would ignore how well "To Hold You, Drum" mixes noise and whispery negative space and sets up the album's surprisingly sweet, hopeful resolution, "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack," which also ranks among the band's finest work. They Were Wrong, So We Drowned might have been too densely packed with ideas and sounds, but Drum's Not Dead errs in the opposite direction: too many tracks feel like variations on the album's themes that don't really go anywhere. Though there are many moments of primal energy (the eerie, hypnotic taunting of "Hold You Drum," "Drum and the Uncomfortable Can"'s climactic doom) and beauty (the flowing water and brooding melody on "The Wrong Coat for You Mt. Heart Attack," "A Visit from Drum"'s expansive guitars and emotional vulnerability), they never quite jell into something that goes beyond being momentarily impressive. Drum's Not Dead is undeniably interesting, but somehow unsatisfying; arguably the best thing about it is how it shows Liars are willing to keep pushing themselves into unknown creative territory, even if the results aren't always consistently great. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'They Were Wrong, So We Drowned'
Release Date 2/23/2004
Tracks 10
Label Mute
See Album Tracklist and Review
What The Critics Say
Not content to be just the most challenging of the crop of groups reworking dance-punk, the Liars -- now consisting of founding members Angus Andrew and Aaron Hemphill and new recruit Julian Gross -- redefine their radical aims on They Were Wrong, So We Drowned. Taking inspiration from the tape-loop experiments of This Heat and the finely chopped electronica of Matmos, the Liars also draw upon the legends surrounding Walpurgisnacht, the date in German folklore when witches fly to the Brocken mountain and perform rituals that coincide with spring's victory over winter. The result is an album that, from its witch-hunt alluding title to its songs, is a riveting exploration of the dangerously seductive power of fear. Making full use of the political potency of its metaphor, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned depicts the struggle between a village of Christians and the women they believe to be a coven of witches, alternating their sides of the story track by track. According to Walpurgisnacht legend, one of the main remedies against the night's evil spirits is noise; after sunset, the boys of the villages near the mountains make as much noise as possible to drive away the witches and demons that emerge after being trapped in the earth during the winter months. The Liars take this part of the legend to heart: They Were Wrong, So We Drowned is sculpted from layers of digital and organic noise that create a suffocating sense of dread. "Broken Witch" starts the album with ominous drones and stuttering drums that eventually fall into a grinding, nearly industrial rhythm. It's a deeply unsettling song, and not just because the shouted refrain "blood, blood, blood" is one of its few immediate hooks. But as challenging as the track is, it's only the Liars' opening salvo: as it unfolds, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned gets progressively darker, denser, and stranger. The first time through, its mix of crushing noise and eerie negative space is equally exhilarating and bewildering, and in many ways, the album is thoroughly disorienting: its juxtapositions of modern sounds and processes, centuries-old legends, and ageless emotions create a thought-provoking cognitive dissonance. Likewise, the album's electro-noise-prog hybrid is as much of a departure from They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top as that album's smart, angular rock was from most of the work of the Liars' contemporaries. Aside from both having titles that tell stories from the viewpoints of the dead and defeated, the main similarity between They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top and They Were Wrong, So We Drowned comes from "This Dust Makes That Mud," the lengthy, lock groove-like track that closes the debut album and seems to have colored the intensity of the follow-up. The tribal drums that make up the album's pulse on the musique concrète-inspired "Read the Book That Wrote Itself" and the abrasive dance-punk of "There's Always Room on the Broom" have a lot to do with its relentless thrust, but the sounds surrounding the percussion are far from primitive. Co-producer David Sitek shows why he is a forward-thinking sound-shaper repeatedly on They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, particularly on "Hold Hands and It Will Happen Anyway," which pairs the prettiest melody on the album with savage guitars and more of those pagan drums. This song, along with "They Don't Want Your Corn - They Want Your Kids" and "They Took 14 for the Rest of Our Lives," injects dance-punk with some of the sense of danger that punk once had. By the time "Flow My Tears the Spider Said" turns from a brooding sea shanty into a desert island of chirping birds and mysterious clanking noises, They Were Wrong, So We Drowned proves itself to be more like a force of nature than a proper album. By not just defying but denying the expectations about what their music should be like, the Liars have created one of the most fascinating, confrontational albums of the 2000s. ~ Heather Phares, All Music Guide
'They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top'
Release Date 10/1/1999
Tracks 9
Label Blast First
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What The Critics Say
The debut LP from Brooklyn's Liars is a churning collection of jerky punk rock, funk grooves, and computerized mayhem that oddly enough comes off quite charming. With sufficiently angular guitars, British-tinged vocals, and a truly pummeling bass presence, the group rocks with phenomenal energy and absolutely no restraint. The half-hour-long closer, "The Dust That Makes the Mud," collapses into a puzzlingly repetitive, sample-ridden hip-hop beat that ends things on a bizarre note, but the lead-up is pure rock & roll, complete with the attitude and aggression that makes for a great listen. Liars have a surprisingly unique approach that distinguishes them from other groups in their willingness to experiment with different tones, volumes, and styles, all of which make They Threw Us in a Trench and Stuck a Monument On an astounding debut. Catchy group vocals are all over the disc, and just about every chorus is instantly memorable yet still somewhat pummeling. The use of digital sounds and beats only adds to the unique properties of the record, giving it a feel somewhat akin to later Les Savy Fav records, only with a much more punk-fueled sound. Liars are something special, and when a young band puts out a record like this it is hard not to pay attention. Where they'll go from here is impossible to guess, but with a band this hyperactively creative, that seems to be the point. ~ Peter J. D'Angelo, All Music Guide
